The schism has passed. The Church is alive and well, holding up the
faith in Surry Hills. The establishment, now reduced to a core of
Steve Kilbey and Marty Willson-Piper will tell you it was never at
threat; last year's departure of guitarist and founding member Peter
Koppes merely signalling the start of another stage.

Russell Kilbey, the former frontman of the Crystal Set, answers the
door of his older sibling's three storey terrace house. Through the
long corridor to the to the center of the first floor sits the small
home studio, a five-step stroll from the kitchen sink. The walls of
the room are lined with a 24 track desk, a couple of synthesiser
workstations, a computer monitor, a couch and a selection of Marty's
instruments. There's hardly enough space left to swing a guitar.

Steve comes in from the backyard and invites me into his electronic
lab. Marty sits on an office chair, struggling to adapt his fretboard
agility to a mandolin which - along with other exotic instruments -
has been borrowed from an ethnic music shop down the road. Also
present in Andy "Dare" Mason, a long- time cohort of the band and
engineer on these sessions.

"How do you want to do this ?" asks Steve. "Do you want to hear some
of the stuff ?" Sure. "Okay, let's take the last five." he tells Andy,
telling him to skip the other 15 or so tracks already put done over the
past month.

As Steve lights a small hash pipe, Marty explains that the Koppes-less
Church is "a whole different beast." When you're a group, you all stick
to the instrument that you always play. On this stuff we're changing
around; I'm playing bass, Steve's playing guitar, we're both playing
keys. Suddenly it's opened up a lot of creative avenues which is an
interesting side-effect of being less than we were."

"I think we're a lot wilder without Peter, " adds Steve, "because he
was very sort of musical and he liked things to be in scales and in
tune. He very much likes pop music. I think Marty and I are no longer
bowing to the tyranny of the pop song structure." He pauses to pass
the pipe to me. "That'll frighten Mushroom when they read this, won't
it !" he says, causing the room to explode in laughter.

I take my place on the couch and take in a polite portion of the
smoke. "Have some more if you like, " Steve offers with an inviting
hand gesture. "You like your music loud, don't you ?"

As the first track booms throught the boxes, Marty jumps out of his
chair. "I know you have to take notes, but let's have a little mood
lighting, hey ?" he says with a keen smile, dimming the room to fog-
like visibility.

The music is raw; heavy, rigid guitar chords giving way to full-bodied
synthesiser washes. It sounds nothing like Priest = Aura. If
anything, it recalls the more conventional elements of the band's
earlier work. The second track is more Church-like. It's based on an
intricate staccato guitar loop with strings moving in and out, giving
it a melancholic mood. Like all the other pieces it's still
lyricless. Later, Kilbey suggests the band is still open to the option
of releasing an instrumental album. Of the five pieces the third comes
closest to where you would imagine (or naively expect) the Church to be
at this point of its creative development. Constructed around a joyous
Willson-Piper solo and a driving rhythm, it's the aural equivalent of,
um, running through the bushes at high speed. (Sorry, the hash has
taken hold.) The next track, "Day of the Dead", is a deeply texttured
work, set to a samba beat. Long sustained riffs blend with jungle
effects into a chaotic zenith.